Clone me next.

I have a rather busy morning today, pals, and frankly, I’m a little tapped at the moment. Things will ease up after noon, but I think I’ll use the time to catch up on a little housekeeping — real, literal housekeeping — instead of blogging. Fortunately, good peanuts for the barflies today:

Fascinating: Farm boy steers his steer to a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair. Twice. He wins in 2010 with Doc before it’s revealed that Doc is a clone of Wade, who the same kid showed to the same title (“big steer”) two years previous. You have to be from Iowa — or Ohio — to understand how important a big championship at a big state fair can be, and while this has aspects of a joke, it was obviously intentional; the kid’s dad is president of a bovine-genetics firm. And maybe you have to have an amateur’s interest in animal husbandry, as I do, to find this interesting, but it is.

Fierce! Woman pulled over for suspicion of drunken driving walks the line like it’s a runway, demands her “Amanda rights.” Via Eric Zorn.

Fu’ u’: Via Roy, a look at libertarian thinking on the Tea Party. It all started with George W. Bush, says Steve Chapman, only it was apparently an invisible movement then. Huh. Meanwhile, Carl Paladino is a vile racist, and I’ll cut any bitch who says he isn’t. But, following Chapman’s reasoning, the GOP is “lucky” to have him.

Faboo: When your baby photo becomes a meme, better lie back and enjoy it.

Back tomorrow, with 50 percent less lameness.

Posted at 9:12 am in Current events, Popculch, Same ol' same ol' |
 

41 responses to “Clone me next.”

  1. 4dbirds said on September 16, 2010 at 9:55 am

    Put me in the camp that says cloning a past winner is cheating.

    63 chars

  2. coozledad said on September 16, 2010 at 10:00 am

    When Reagan defunded the mental hospitals, I thought he was just being a Dickensian asswart. Apparently it was a long term political strategy aimed at getting as many bugfucks out into the voting population as possible, and then on to political office. Paladino and O’Donnel are living refutations of Godwin’s law. There ought to be some reverse syllogism wherein If a beagle is eating a turd somewhere a Republican is behaving like Ernst Rohm.

    451 chars

  3. LAMary said on September 16, 2010 at 10:59 am

    Did any of you hear the discussion on NPR this morning with the Tea Party leader from (Waco?) Texas and the guy from some anti-gay, anti-abortion group talking about the principles of the Tea Party? She was pretty much libertarian and he was all about religion, right to life and gays burning in hell. Mutually exclusive as far as I can tell, but both Tea Party. How does that work?

    382 chars

  4. nancy said on September 16, 2010 at 11:03 am

    How that works is, the fiscal conservatives claim the Tea Party is all about spending, and claim the lunatics like Ms. O’Donnell are but a tiny fraction of the group who wouldn’t get any attention at all, except the mean media keep singling them out. The fact so many of them brought on this attention by RUNNING FOR OFFICE is one of those things they can’t seem to hear.

    It kills me, just kills me, to hear these maroons talking about how Christine O’Donnell, a woman who can’t pay her own bills and lies like a rug about seemingly everything, will bring fiscal sanity to Washington. Oh rilly?

    598 chars

  5. Connie said on September 16, 2010 at 11:07 am

    I heard the interview between the Waco tea party leader and the guy from the American Family Association. He essentially was trying to co-opt the tea party meeting for their social issues – right to life, sanctity of marriage, etc., and she was having none of it.

    264 chars

  6. Sue said on September 16, 2010 at 11:28 am

    Wisconsin now has its own little Sarah Palin in the Republican Lt. Governor candidate. As far as I can see, same platform, but with a few more brains and hopefully not as much malice. Cute as a bug, too, just like Sarah, and works the camera like a pro, since she was a local Milwaukee reporter. She could make the difference in the Governor’s race, if current attitudes prevail, bringing Scott Walker in on her coattails instead of the other way around.
    http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/103001139.html

    510 chars

  7. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 11:55 am

    I can only chuckle mirthlessly at the idea not so long ago that the Republican Party represented the “grown-ups.” My God. Being stupid is now part of the job description. Like so many of these teabaggers, O’Donnell is another science denier, who would like to see creationism taught in schools. She also does not believe in greenhouse gases or global warming. And, of course, she is a childless, unmarried woman who is opposed to abortion even in the case of rape and incest, along with a very unhealthy fixation on sex in general. When you are best known for equating masturbation with adultery, boy howdy, you are out there.

    We’re nearing territory already marked by H.L. Mencken: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

    960 chars

  8. alex said on September 16, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    Christine O’Donnell doesn’t know jack and won’t do diddly. She’ll probably try to get our Amanda rights repealed too, the skank.

    128 chars

  9. Connie said on September 16, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    In other news I have accepted a job in my home state of Michigan. We will be living in the Lakes area of southwest Oakland County, I will be about 40 miles north/northwest of Nancy Nall headquarters. As I posted on my facebook page, Moving home to Michigan! Go Green! Go Blue! Go Lions! And still and probably always, Go Butler!

    330 chars

  10. nancy said on September 16, 2010 at 12:23 pm

    Tremendous news, Connie. We’ll have to meet halfway for coffee sometime, which, in true west side-centric style, you will designate as “that place around the corner from my house.” I like SW Oakland, however, and will happily make the drive.

    241 chars

  11. alex said on September 16, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    So sorry to hear you’ll be leaving Elkhart, Connie, but best of luck to you in your new pursuits.

    97 chars

  12. brian stouder said on September 16, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    I think Connie and Nance represent brain drain from Indiana – and we Hoosiers cannot afford it!

    BTW – I think Alex has the honors for best belly laugh of the thread all sewn up

    180 chars

  13. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 1:02 pm

    If I were a male in Delaware, I would be highly offended by Sister Christine’s anti-masturbation jihad. But then, I was Portnoyesque in my embrace as a youth, so maybe I’m not really tuned in.

    BTW, I see Karl Rove has walked back his attacks on Sister Christine. When Rush Limbaugh bellows like the king walrus, all the other critters fall into line.

    353 chars

  14. Bill White said on September 16, 2010 at 1:22 pm

    “an amateur’s interest in animal husbandry” – I know nothing about farming despite growing up in a tiny farm town, but I still enjoy overhearing the market reports on the radio in deep beer-soaked southern accents – “JOO-ly corn, 5.43 up two…”

    247 chars

  15. Peter said on September 16, 2010 at 1:45 pm

    “an amateur’s interest in animal husbandry”? Whoa, Bill, is this more hypocrisy about Ms. Christine – she wants all men to be king of their castle, but she doesn’t mind women folk marrying animals?

    198 chars

  16. MarkH said on September 16, 2010 at 1:50 pm

    What Brian said.

    Connie, did I miss something? I hope this move wasn’t because something happened to your job in Elkhart. I say this becasue I know libraries everywhere are having their challenges. Anyway, congrats, sounds like a great move and you’re really happy.

    269 chars

  17. moe99 said on September 16, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    O’Donnell and her ilk are just proving that sex sells–in a new way in political parties and races. These women are all capitalizing on Sarah Palin’s huge success. And because the candidates are good looking, many voters are willing to overlook their more obvious mental lapses. I don’t possess the time to really analyze it and this is still somewhat inchoate, but I think that the media with their Jon and Kate Gosselin sorts of reality crap have lowered the bar on what the public finds acceptable in all realms, including the political. If it looks good, it must be good.

    579 chars

  18. alex said on September 16, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    I was Port­noyesque in my embrace as a youth.

    No one complained of a slight “wang” to the tenderloin at the dinner table?

    132 chars

  19. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 2:29 pm

    Alex, I was one of the sock guys, LOL.

    38 chars

  20. Sue said on September 16, 2010 at 2:34 pm

    Boys, this was all discussed yesterday…

    41 chars

  21. moe99 said on September 16, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    Sue–LOL!!!

    and then there is this, sigh, about why the american mainstream media is so fffed up:

    http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2010&base_name=raise_taxes_on_the_rich_say_a

    220 chars

  22. paddyo' said on September 16, 2010 at 2:45 pm

    All that sock-guy stuff wasn’t allowed in the Roman Catholic minor seminary (heh-heh), but since we had nuns doing our laundry, I’m sure there was some pre-washing going on . . .
    Thanks for the Mencken quote, Jeff B., that’s a keeper. There are those who would say we aren’t approaching that territory, however — we already reached it in 2000 and 2004. U-S-A! U-S-A!

    369 chars

  23. Dexter said on September 16, 2010 at 2:58 pm

    Wow, I thought you folks would have jumped hard on the Paladino link. I am no prude, but this stuff is sickening and really hard gross-out material, and here I am, the one who was TV surfing and came upon “Bruno”, the scene in which the swinging dick actually winked at the camera for the money shot.
    But Sacha Baron Cohen should study Paladino for inspiration for his next shock-flick.

    389 chars

  24. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    Paladino is a mega-creep, but so was Rick Lazio. Both have demagogued the Islamic center issue to death. I cannot imagine a scenario in which this vicious race-bating, porno-hound isn’t thrashed by Andrew Cuomo, but it truly says something about the state of the GOP when this kind of walking virus wins the nomination.

    319 chars

  25. adrianne said on September 16, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    That Carl Paladino won the GOP nomination for New York governor just shows how disillusioned my fellow New Yorkers are with the state of dysfunction in Albany – I’m not excusing anyone who voted for him, but he really tapped into the frustration factor out there.

    263 chars

  26. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 3:52 pm

    I fully expect a socially conservative Republican to be the next governor of Illinois for all the same reasons, Adrianne. It’s not that so many voters want to punish gay people or outlaw abortion. They are fed up with the deeply entrenched and corrosively corrupt Democratic Party in Illinois. If a moderate Republican like former Gov. Jim Edgar were running, I’d probably vote for them, too. Polls are giving the Republican a significant double-digit lead over the wishy-washy interim governor, who inherited the job when Blago was bagged by the feds.

    The important thing is that a piece of shit like Paladino isn’t elected. He gives creeps a bad name.

    656 chars

  27. MaryRC said on September 16, 2010 at 4:12 pm

    I’m with 4dbirds re the cheating with the clone thing. If it’s not against the rules now, it should be.

    104 chars

  28. MaryRC said on September 16, 2010 at 4:24 pm

    It kills me, just kills me, to hear these maroons talk­ing about how Chris­tine O’Donnell, a woman who can’t pay her own bills and lies like a rug about seem­ingly every­thing, will bring fis­cal san­ity to Wash­ing­ton.

    I don’t think we can under-estimate the power of narcissism when it comes to people identifying with the likes of O’Donnell.

    I was reading the comments on a PUMA-type blog and they were along the lines of “She’s broke, she’s had financial problems, she didn’t have a job. SHE’S ONE OF US!”. No kidding, this was literally the text of one of the comments. These people see themselves in O’Donnell, just like the commenter says — financial troubles, problems getting her life together, rich powerful men in suits sneering at her, refusing to help her and calling her nutty but she triumphs over them.

    When Mike Castle and other Republicans pointed out her shortcomings, they read that as smearing. Unfair attacks. Sexism. No wonder the GOP establishment is baffled. Poor Castle must have thought “Great, all I have to do is point out that this woman can’t manage her own affairs, lies and leaves debts all over town, it’s in the bag”. The reaction of these women is “They’re attacking her personally.”

    1269 chars

  29. Jeff Borden said on September 16, 2010 at 4:37 pm

    It’s the same with $P, too. Any time anyone points out that she is an incredibly stupid person with a very checkered record of public service, they’re hatin’ on her because of her plumbing.

    I find Our Lady of Wasilla’s whining particularly amusing given all her tough talk about herself. She’s a pitbull with lipstick, all right, a moose-hunting frontier woman who knows there’s room for every animal “right next to the mashed potatoes,” until someone says something negative. Then, she morphs into Baby Teardrop.

    516 chars

  30. 4dbirds said on September 16, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    I am not an O’Donnell fan, NOT.AT.ALL but it’s easy to manage money when you have it. The senate is full of millionaires. I say the fact that she had money problems and knows what it’s like to stay awake at night with worry makes her like most Americans and very appealing to many people.

    The old GOP wanted to use people like O’Donnell and Palin to keep them in power. Now that they may actually have to socialize with the in-bred cousins, they’re getting panicky.

    I’m not crazy about the dems, they make me so angry with their pussydom I want to spit, but the republicans are pure evil.

    601 chars

  31. Jolene said on September 16, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    “If it looks good, it must be good,” said Moe.

    Social psychologists spent an inordinate amount of time doing studies that demonstrated just that result way back in the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, attractive people, when compared to people described identically but pictured less appealingly, were perceived to be kinder, more intelligent, friendlier, more likely to succeed in school and work, and all manner of other good things.

    In a political world driven by 30-second TV ads, people like Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donell do well, and our Harvard-educated, book-writing president is seen as “too professorial.”

    Un-fuckimg-believable.

    643 chars

  32. Jolene said on September 16, 2010 at 5:12 pm

    I’m writing on my smartphone, which, unfortunately, is’nt smart enough to allow me to edit my previous post, so you’ll just have to put up w/ my misspelled profanity.

    166 chars

  33. Dexter said on September 16, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    Well, Jolene, I now have a tongue-cramp, trying to pronounce your typo. Actually when I finished the word my entire mouth sort of crashed into a wall at 100 mph. My mouth froze in place right there at the g.

    Is Jolene a common name? I had a classmate with this name, but have rarely noticed it until I came here to nn dot c.

    Craig Ferguson seems overly interested in US politics. (He’s a Scot.) he’s always coming up with political zingers, and he really was funny last night with his take on the Delaware O’Donnell vote.

    Here’s a bit from last night for all you Don Rickles lovers.
    http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/09/16/don-rickles-attacks-craig-ferguson-and-his-audience/

    685 chars

  34. Deborah said on September 16, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    Some of these people like Ms O’Donell strike me as people who know they’d be nobodies on the left, but they can have a schtick with little to no talent on the right and be in the limelight. They’re not intelligent, they’re not funny. What they are is cute and peppy, and they’ve found a niche that will prop them up. They get a lot of attention there, that’s what they’re really after. And the people who prop them up, exploit them. This is super obvious of course, but those are the rules and everybody abides by them for some reason.

    535 chars

  35. Jolene said on September 16, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    Jolene is an unusual name, Dexter. In my now rather long life, I’ve only encountered one or two others. Dolly Parton wrote a song called Jolene, but I’ve never felt it captured my rather dressed down, academic self. The name does, though, have a sort of Southern cast, but there’s nothing Southern about me or my heritage.

    Craig Ferguson is an American now. He became a citizen a couple of years ago and wrote a pretty good book called American on Purpose.

    680 chars

  36. Tom M said on September 16, 2010 at 7:15 pm

    On some great and glo­ri­ous day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a down­right moron.”
    2001-2009 Been there, done that.

    208 chars

  37. Harrison said on September 16, 2010 at 7:30 pm

    Dexter,

    Thanks for the link to the Fergson-Rickles tape. Don’s not as quick as he used to be, but he’s still quick. If anyone wants to see any of his old stuff, go to YouTube. His appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson were great!

    Someday I’ll wake up and find out that Rickles is dead. i know on that day, I’ll feel more than just a little sad.

    363 chars

  38. brian stouder said on September 16, 2010 at 9:17 pm

    In a polit­i­cal world dri­ven by 30-second TV ads, peo­ple like Sarah Palin and Chris­tine O’Donell do well, and our Harvard-educated, book-writing pres­i­dent is seen as “too pro­fes­so­r­ial.”

    Tomorrow, I run off to the Lincoln boyhood home, where the future president and his family lived, from when he was 7 until he was 21; and where his mom Nancy and his older sister Sarah and her newborn (she died during child-birth, at the age of 21, when Abe was almost 19) are buried. It is east of Evansville (literally in the middle of nowhere), and this year’s Lincoln Colloquium is there – so this is as good a reason as any to head there, even if I never go there again.

    Shelby (who I would dragoon into coming, if it wasn’t a school day!) was asking me why I am so interested in hearing and reading about the same subject again and again, and I was telling her that I think it puts so many of our modern-day questions into such clear perspective.

    In many ways, Lincoln’s own burning ambition (and indeed, his popular rise) stemmed from his ‘bumpkin cred’ (as opposed to a guy like Stephen Douglas’s or William Seward’s refined pedigrees); and his rise exemplifies the absolute holy grail for people without recognized credentials. Indeed, Lincoln was a fairly low-road politician up ’til his 40’s (Michael Burlingame’s portrait is of a low-road political hack and self-made man who has a significant mid-life crisis, and emerges on the other side determined to make a meaningful difference); he was quite capable of destroying lesser men in public speeches and debates (and in anonymous poison-pen newspaper commentary), just for sport. (after his mid-40’s, he stopped that, and genuinely turned over a new leaf)

    I guess that’s the question to keep asking about our contemporary vociferous candidates: What are they aiming for? What is their ideal? Not just ‘What are they against?”, but what are they positively FOR? What do they believe? Because they all believe something.

    The most craven of them might believe whatever horrible thing – but let’s press the point and make them state that (as Rachel Maddow did, in the case of Mr Paul), or at least fail to show us that they believe anything better. A guy like Rand Paul seems to have a brain in his head, and yet he pretty unambiguously stated that in his view, a business owner would be well within her rights to say “No blacks can eat here” (or in Fort Wayne – “No Burmese may enter here”).

    A politician may well think that the law allows for such an unjust thing, and if so – he should state that he will work tirelessly to CHANGE that law, so as to preclude such prejudice.

    But if he says he believes that discrimination is altogether legal, and STOPS THERE – then (it seems to me) it is entirely reasonable for an observer to conclude that he is A RACIST PIG, and that his election to the United States Senate would be a troubling abomination (as opposed to what I want to see in our Obama nation). Upon his election to the Senate, at the hands of our fellow American voters who live in Kentucky, we’d have to really ask – what the hell is the matter with Kentucky?

    We’d have to conclude that, however marvelous the inscribed words at the Lincoln Memorial are, that things haven’t really progressed nearly as far as we’d like.

    (and with that – see y’all later!)

    3390 chars

  39. Peter said on September 16, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    4.d.birds – I certainly don’t disagree with your opinion and wouldn’t even think of you endorsing Ms. O’Donnell, but my problem is that I’m sure there are people they can identify with her because she’s not a millionaire. But her staying up all night worrying about making ends meet? I don’t ever see that happening.

    It just galls me that people like O’Donnell pass themselves off as ordinary, hard working Americans. Well, Christine, what actual hard work have you done, other than appearing on MTV and speaking at a few colleges? She’s a native New Jersian (New Jerseyite?) who moved to Delaware five years ago with the express purpose of running for the senate. In that sense, she’s just like the millionaires who figure they should be a senator just because.

    I swear there are neo-nazi’s living in a trailer park in Arizona who make more sense than her and $P, and it just burns me up that so many people are just lapping it up.

    943 chars

  40. Jolene said on September 16, 2010 at 11:23 pm

    Christine O’Donnell’s web site says that she has raised $1.28 million dollars. Also noteworthy, that’s all it says. No bio, no positions, no pictures or campaign videos.

    226 chars

  41. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 16, 2010 at 11:27 pm

    Brian — I look forward to a full report.

    FYI, Jon Stewart just announced a Washington Mall event that we can all get behind. Who’s gonna be in DC on Saturday, Oct. 30?

    171 chars